My husband and I stumbled upon a very cool new store yesterday. It’s called Benessere. When you walk into the store, there’s tables set up with shiny stainless steel vats of olive oils and balsamic vinegars. They have a huge variety (40 and counting), and the best part is you can sample them all. We’re talking balsamic vinegar infused with peaches, fig-infused balsamic, chocolate-infused balsamic, black currant-infused balsamic, olive oil pressed with fresh lemons, flavored olive oils and olive oils from around the world. They have some lovely aged balsamics too, as well as a lovely toasty walnut oil and some fantastic white and black truffle oils.
Then, once you’ve decided on some delicious new treats to bring home, you get to bottle them all up. They offer 3 different sizes, all reasonably priced too. I have a feeling that I’ll be visiting this store again soon.
So the next time you find yourself on the “food tour” of Portland, add this cool new store to your list (as well as Penzey’s Spices, which is amazing too, but needs it’s own blog post). You’ll be glad you did.
Awesome to know about! I’ll be heading over there as soon as possible.
There was a store like this in a town I used to live in for a while. I used to go there on the Saturday rush, then you could sample a lot without them noticing! Everything I bought from there was amazing.
I think dazee has gotten olive oil in there for us, but I haven’t checked it out. O f course, he forgot to tell me about all the happy-action going on in there too! What was your favorite?
You won’t be disappointed Celyn. It’s really cool.
The best part of this Fanny, is that you don’t have to feel self conscious about sampling. The samples are self-serve.
Kittee, I had a number of favorites, but the currant balsamic, lemon olive oil, black truffle oil and walnut oils were some of my favs. I didn’t taste everything, as that would be a lot of oil to eat! They have some organic olive oils as well too. yummy!!
Sounds like my kind of store! Thanks for the suggestion!